How do married clergy (preachers) in Protestant denominations support their family?

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There's no singular answer to this question, and you'd likely see tons of different situations depending on the pastor and his church.

At my church, the pastor is full-time, and his salary is paid out of a portion of the tithes given to the church. However, in some situations, pastors must find another job in order to pay the bills, typically because they're working in a smaller church where the tithes are not large enough to support him. I've known pastors who are in this situation as well. They'll work a factory job or something low-key and low-demand so that they can support themselves as they typically treat their clergy role as their "primary" job, even though it doesn't pay well enough to support a family.

Some protestant churches, however, are also set up in denominations, where the salary is paid by the denomination, and tithe money typically rolls into the denomination and not directly into the church. It just depends on the situation.

Each church is different.

As for balancing time, again, just like any job, some have effective time management, and some don't. My brother is a pastor, and he manages his time with his family by simply carving out time that is devoted to the family, and regularly blocking that time out so that he can properly perform his role as father and husband. Other pastors may not have the same time management skills, and may indeed neglect their families to serve a "higher call". This is an unfortunate fact that happens all too often (hence the stereotype of the "Pastor's Kid", who ends up being a wild child, largely due to his father's neglect).

Ultimately, the married clergyman would have the same approach to supporting his family as the unmarried clergyman would. He would have to trust God to meet his needs, as well as the needs of his family if he has one.

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According to Salary.com, the average salary for pastors in the United States is between $70,000 and $90,000, a figure that squares with what I'm familiar with in my area. The Huffington Post on the other hand, breaks it out, but puts the numbers much lower:

Both Reform and Conservative rabbis earn an estimated average annual salary of around $140,000, while the median salary for full-time pastors at Protestant churches was just $40,000, the Jewish Daily Forward reports. Catholic priests and Muslim imams make even less, with average salaries of about $25,000 and $30,000 per year, respectively.

Contrast all of these with the current U.S. Poverty Line of $15K for 2 people / $23K for a family of 4, and you will see that in all of these cases, the actual salary is sufficient for a family. Maybe not generous, but sufficient.

In those cases where you are just starting out, it is low, but usually livable. And, when it's not, many turn to "bi-vocational ministry," meaning you take two jobs to make ends meet.

What these numbers miss out on, in the United States, however, is probably the coolest benefit of being ordained - namely that your housing allowance is tax free. If you own your own home (and any pastor with a parsonage does not!), then you get to double dip. Here's what I mean:

  • Assume my mortgage is $15,000 / year, with $10 K of that being interest, and $ 5K principal.

  • Because it is a mortgage, I get to deduct that $20K from my AGI, meaning that as a normal person with, say, a $50,000/year salary, I would be taxes on $40,000 of that.

  • As an ordained person, however, I'd arrange with my church to not pay me $50K, but rather only $35K + $15K Housing Allowance. The $15K Housing Allowance is not taxed. As such, my AGI is now $35K - $10K = $25,000 a year. A pastor is thus being taxed a lot less.

  • Ordained persons also have the choice of paying Social Security or not. If they don't pay in, they don't get to receive, but they don't have to participate if they choose not to.

In other words, the tax advantages of being clergy are pretty great. With so many deductions, your dollar goes further.

Full disclosure, when I had my own church, my predecessor made $36,000/year. I chose to only take $18,000/year, but I also was pulling in well over six digits from my programmer job. This was a very, very small church, and I wanted them to give more away to better causes. Still, the tithes of that church were able to support each salary at the appropriate time. Most Baptist churches operate directly from the individual churches' tithes. More hierarchical denominations sometimes fund vicars directly, but usually each church is responsible for paying its own staff.

I give these numbers to say that pastors won't be rich, but it isn't that difficult to live on it either

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